Trump uses televised address to try to create a border crisis

By Dan Balz

Washington: Past presidents have used the Oval Office in prime time to announce military action, to lay out major initiatives or to calm the nation's nerves in times of stress.

President Donald Trump chose the gravity of that venue for a far different reason: to try to create a sense of crisis in pursuit of an elusive campaign promise.

With the government in partial shutdown and talks with Democratic congressional leaders stalemated over funding for a border wall, the President used a televised address to the nation as a dramatic escalation in what has been an unsuccessful effort to sway opinion nationally and in Congress. As skilful as he is at dominating the national conversation, he has been singularly ineffective in this battle in changing public minds or weakening the will of his Democratic opponents.

President Donald Trump speaks from the Oval Office of the White House as he gives a prime-time address about border security.Credit:AP

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His speech was a compendium of arguments, some of dubious nature, that he has made before: the border is being overrun by dangerous criminals who have committed violent crimes in the US; migrant women and children are being victimised; the opioid crisis stems directly from a flood tide of illegal drugs crossing the southern border; his plan to secure that border includes advanced technology, more law enforcement personnel and, yes, a barrier costing $US5.7 billion ($8 billion) that would be made of steel slats, in deference, he said, to Democrats who oppose a concrete wall – a change Democrats say they never asked for.

Trump has struggled to change public opinion in part because this is not a new fight. Immigration worked for him in the 2016 campaign, and there are still elements of the issue that put Democrats on the defensive. But in the most recent test, it did not work. In the run-up to the midterm elections, the President used campaign rallies to warn of the threat of an "invasion" by a caravan of migrants moving north through Mexico towards the US border. He ordered US troops to take up stations on the border. He accused the Democrats of being defenders of open borders.

The dire rhetoric and the other actions resonated primarily in the red states of America, where Trump already enjoys strong support. More broadly, however, his arguments were either ignored or rejected.

The case the President made on Tuesday evening raised obvious questions. How and when did the conditions at the border reach the point of becoming a humanitarian and national security crisis such that they demanded a nationally televised address and maybe a national emergency? How would the $US5.7 billion in new funding he is seeking, which represents only a down payment on something that could take years and many billions more to complete, be able to resolve the immediacy of the crisis he described?

Above all, if the nation truly faces a humanitarian and security crisis, why should the government remain in partial shutdown – particularly employees at the Department of Homeland Security?

Oval Office addresses are usually designed to speak to the widest audience possible – to rally the nation rather than divide it, to build as broad a coalition as possible for the task ahead. In this case, the President appeared to have three related audiences in mind: Republicans on Capitol Hill, especially those in the Senate, whose support he must have to keep this fight going and whose patience may be wearing thin; his most loyal supporters, who believed his promise to build a wall that Mexico would pay for; and, finally, the small percentage of Americans whose views about the wall aren't already made up.

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Ultimately, there will have to be an agreement to reopen the government, though exactly on whose terms remains the sticking point. Trump may hope he can get his wall by other means than compromise; Democrats may think they can crush Trump right at the start of a new Congress. That is the nature of the stand-off and the reason the President felt the need to use the ultimate bully pulpit to make his case on Tuesday night.